


Family Dinner

by gellavonhamster



Category: A Series of Unfortunate Events - Lemony Snicket
Genre: Don't copy to another site, F/F, Gen, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-22
Updated: 2019-09-22
Packaged: 2020-10-26 02:16:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,607
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20734589
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gellavonhamster/pseuds/gellavonhamster
Summary: Fernald is suspicious of his sister's new girlfriend.





	Family Dinner

**Author's Note:**

  * A translation of [Группа Пропащих Волонтёров](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16039004) by [gellavonhamster](https://archiveofourown.org/users/gellavonhamster/pseuds/gellavonhamster). 

Fernald grimly dragged the remaining piece of quesadilla across the plate with his hook. It was one of the strangest family dinners within his memory, and he’d had occasion to have dinner in a company which, to varying degrees, could be called ‘family’, while on a submarine, on a supposedly desert island, and in an abandoned house where the air reeked of mold and the oven expelled an army of cockroaches upon an attempt to light it. By now, the house looked much nicer – through Fernald’s efforts as well, among other things. By now, the walls had been covered with new wallpapers, the floorboards weren’t caving in under his feet anymore, and the large heavy table had been cleaned from dirt and set with new, non-cracked dinnerware. It was at that table that their guest was now seated catty-corner from him, engaged in a lively conversation with Quigley, her arm slung around Fiona’s shoulders. Fiona was carrying herself just as resolutely and cautiously at the same time as one would expect from a person who brought her girlfriend to meet her relatives for the first time. Probably. Fernald has never brought a girlfriend home to meet his relatives, for a number of reasons. 

The name of Fiona’s girlfriend was Carmelita Spats.

Isadora, who was sitting next to him, nudged him with her elbow.

“I can’t fucking believe this is really happening,” she whispered, having moved a little closer so that the other guests definitely wouldn’t hear them.

“Language,” he scolded her. Isadora snorted quietly. The triplets didn’t respect him, which was right – after everything he had done and had let other people do, he wouldn’t expect them to treat him otherwise – but all the hardships they’d shared with him over the past couple of years must have made them develop, in their own way, a sort of attachment to him. For his part, he could say the latter about them too. They were growing up distrustful but not jumpy, with a strong sense of togetherness and a dark sense of humour. He liked the girl more than the other two because he could discuss poetry with her, and he secretly regretted that it wasn’t Isadora that his sister was dating. On the other hand, it was quite possible that after everything they’d been through together they saw each other if not as sisters, then as cousins, and any kind of romance was out of the question. 

Still, he liked that possibility much better than the one he was supposed to be putting up with now.

“I don’t trust her,” he muttered, his eyes fixed on Carmelita. He recognized her the very moment she entered the house after Fiona, and would have her recognized with no trouble even if Duncan hadn’t bumped into the corner of the table and spilled his tea upon seeing her, or if Quigley hadn’t exclaimed “You?” with such a look on his face as if he’d just seen a flying saucer. Just like three years ago, she was ginger, freckled, loud, somehow took up too much space despite being short, and favoured clothes in garish pink. On hearing her say “Hi, Hooky”, he almost lashed out at her, stopped only by Hector very promptly, very pointedly grabbing his shoulder. 

“Me neither,” Isadora whispered back. “But, you know, as weird as it may be to admit it, so far she seems a little bit less insufferable than before. She hasn’t said anything nasty to anyone yet, or tried to tap-dance for no good reason.”

“She might have changed. Or she might be trying to worm herself into our confidence,” Fernald wiped his hook with a napkin and got up from the table. Fiona turned to him instantly. 

“Are you going somewhere?” she asked carefully. She was nervous, and the very thing that his sister was being nervous because of Carmelita was enough to make him boil with anger. Fernald shook his head.

“I’ll go have a cigarette. Carmelita,” he shifted his gaze to their guest, “you smoke?”

He had to give the girl some credit: she took a hint at once.

“If someone treats me to it,” she rose and quickly squeezed the hand that Fiona held out to her. “Be right back, babe.”

Fernald clenched his teeth so hard that they started to ache.

Carmelita followed him to the porch. It was chilly outside; the summer was stealthily retreating, and the painfully bright sun wasn’t giving any real warmth. Fernald made a mental note that soon they would have to start sweeping the path leading to the house – the leaves were already getting yellow and ready to fall down. He squinted in the light, and hid his hooks in his pockets. Carmelita leaned on the railing of the porch. 

“So, what were you saying about a cigarette?” she reminded him.

“You’re sixteen. No cigarettes for you,” he stepped closer to her. Perhaps from the sidelines it looked like he was going to threaten her. Fernald hoped it was exactly the way it looked like. “And now you’re gonna tell me what you’re really doing here.” 

The girl peered at him curiously, almost with amusement.

“Came to meet my girlfriend’s family, obviously.”

“Yeah, don’t give me that,” Fernald took one of his hands out of the pocket. The metal of the hook glistened dimly in the autumn sunlight. “Who sent you? The VFD? Or that bitch?”

Carmelita rolled her eyes.

“If you mean Esmé, I haven’t seen her in, like, three years.”

“Are you trying to tell me you’re not living with her?”

“Have you even heard what I was saying at the table at all? They stuffed me into a children’s home when she got arrested, and after she was released, she didn’t come back for me,” her facial expression and the tone of her voice made it difficult to understand if that had wounded her back then and was still wounding her now. “I have a new guardian now, and she’s way cooler. An actress. Says I can get far if I work on improving myself,” Fernald couldn’t help noticing that the Carmelita Spats he used to know would have never admitted that she had to improve herself. “And the VFD tried to draw me in – the previous guardian, before Lizzie, was one of their lot. But I ran away. Like I need these… cakesniffers.” 

The familiar word made Fernald grow wary again.

“Yeah, and I’m supposed to believe that you’ve changed just like that?”

“People change. You’ve changed, Hooky.”

“My name is Fernald,” he put his hook on the railing right beside her arm. She didn’t display any agitation or try to back away, but her condescending smile (condescending, hell, like it was him who was sixteen not her!) vanished. Very well, Fernald thought. Perfect. “And I haven’t changed.” 

“Your sister says you have.”

“She tends to see the best in me.”

“And in me, too,” Carmelita jerked up her head and looked him in the eye. “Do you not trust her at all either?”

He looked away – and suddenly saw that the skin on one side of her lower neck was scarred and reddish. A burn mark, apparently spreading down under the clothes. She noticed that he had noticed, and swiftly adjusted the sweater collar, pulling it up even higher than the style intended. 

“A souvenir from the Hotel Denouement,” she explained casually – even way too casually – and Fernald remembered another fire, and how it burned the papers of Gregor Anwhistle and all the furniture in the lab and his own hands, and how he couldn’t even scream with pain properly because he had already lost his voice trying to call for his mother. He took his hook off the railing. 

Teenagers often made wrong decisions – especially when pushed by the adults around them. People often did terrible things and regretted it later, or didn’t truly regret it but still tried not to do them anymore, at least for the sake of their own tranquility.

Who was he to reprimand Carmelita Spats, who was, of course, spoiled and selfish, but at least hadn’t killed anyone?

“So you don’t know what Esmé’s been up to, do you?” he asked her to stall for time somehow, so that he could collect his thoughts. Carmelita shrugged. 

“All I know is what was in the papers.”

“And what about…” he stopped short of saying ‘the boss’. Why on earth would he still call Olaf his boss? 

“Countie? No idea. They never found him. Must’ve died in the fire,” Carmelita replied indifferently. He ought to be indifferent too, he reminded himself. “Can we maybe have a smoke after all?”

“As far as I recall, you’re still sixteen. Anyway, let’s go back inside,” Fernald took a deep breath of delicious, cool September air. He couldn’t say that this conversation had eased his mind, but at least now it felt heavy for different reasons. So the VFD tried to recruit Carmelita again – wonder what they’d been at apart from that… and what they knew about the disappearance of the fortune belonging to the missing Quagmire orphans from the city bank. “I guess Hector must be taking the dessert out of the stove right now.” 

“Hector is the other old man who isn’t your father, right?”

“Stepfather. Who isn’t our stepfather. And if you’re planning to become a part of this family, be so kind as to learn all the names.”

His words about becoming a part of their family made her smile in a way that was very different from usual, actually making her look what one would call _adorable_.

He didn’t tell her that, of course.


End file.
